


North

by Elesphyl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elesphyl/pseuds/Elesphyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can see the halo, that soft yellow light, burning like a flame and its wicker about her body. She is yours, you think, yours alone. Her smile is enough to promise that.</p><p>But is it enough? Is it enough in this world of corruption? Your glance falls again on the gaunt, Lestrange-ravaged girl. No, you think. No, it's never enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	North

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfic that I wrote a few years ago and originally published (under the same penname) on HarryPotterFanfiction.com. It's really dear to my heart, because I'd been planning to write it for over a year and it took me a while to get to it. My thanks as always to my cheerleaders of yore, who I haven't spoken to in far too long (but whom I still love dearly with all my heart) -- Violet Gryfindor (Susan) and Llyralen (Rita). Additionally, every opening sentence of lyrics in every section is pulled from "Dance Me to the End of Love", by Leonard Cohen. If you haven't, I highly recommend you listen to it, because it's a fantastic song. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this!

  
**NORTH**  
( Enemy Ships on Slumbering Horizons )

 

 

 

 

_I. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin_

There is only one other person beside her. She is eleven, and walking on the platform. Her face is alight with the joy of new prospects, of new friends, of a future so happy and bright she cannot but smile. You don't consider her as anything special: she is just a first-year. You are fifteen, a prefect's badge proudly polished abreast your robes, and have not the cares to take more than a casual interest in her.

Instead, you help her hoist her bags into the train. That is all. There is no more contact, no more smiling. She thanks you for your help and jumps down from the train, rushing to give her mother one last embrace as the train's horn hoots and signals a new departure. You wave goodbye to your own parents, standing proudly near the wall, and you disappear within the scarlet engine.

Soon, you find yourself in the prefects' compartment, your feet placed firmly on the ground and your smile shy. There are others here: Spall and Wimington, from Hufflepuff, and Rogers, from Ravenclaw. You are missing the other Gryffindor prefect, and the Slytherins. You don't mind, and instead rise up.

"Up for a round, Rogers?" you ask, and Rogers looks up from his book. It's clear that he is, and does not want to loiter around for the missing prefects. So he places his book upon the bank and straightens his robe. Walking out, you are surprised at the authority you command. You, Arthur Weasley, once someone laughed at, ridiculed, and loved, are now suddenly feared. The power that silver commands is upon your chest. You need only smile, or smirk, or stare, and the world will fall like a puzzle at your feet, obedient and meek.

Running a nervous hand through your hair, you glance at Rogers. He is all confidence and calm, no false tranquility or assumed airs. You attempt to be like him: you lift your chin, and you try to perfect that horrid half-smile that prefects - you know, because you've seen it - use. The corners of your lips curl and rise, and you wonder how you must look. Is it as sculptured as Rogers's look? Or more sketchily drawn? A mere mockery.

You let your shoulders drop and together, you pass through the aisle in silence. Rogers taps you on the shoulder - once, twice! - and signals that he is going to return.

"All right," you say, letting that half-smile grace your face once more. "I can take it from here."

He grins gratefully and heads back to his friends, who you know are not your friends. Still, you surmise, you'll have to tolerate them. But before any more thoughts can be touched upon, red hair and freckles catch your attention. They are like yours, but wilder, unrestrained. Friendlier, and not quite so awkward. It is Molly Prewett, and she is laughing.

Quickly you slide the compartment door open and stand, grinning. You see that your friends are among her friends, and you are happy. She looks up at you, brown eyes alight, and she laughs your name aloud with a bright smile upon her face.

"Hullo, Molly," you respond, and you can feel the blush rising into your cheeks. She smiles and moves to the side to make room for you. And so you sit down.

The conversation flows lightly during the train ride. It changes, sure as the wind that howls above the castle you call home. But you are not with the wind. You are safe, and you are warm. Molly's smile casts its spell upon you, and you settle back, and do not think of the silver badge.

 

_II. Dance me through the paddock till I'm gathered safely in_

Two children have just scrambled off to join their new, troubled families. She, however, is being sorted. Professor Dumbledore calls her name from his scroll and she comes up, giggling and excited, to be seated on the wearied wooden stool. And with the Hat - too large for her head yet unable to contain her unruly mass of hair - seated atop her crown, the room goes silent, just like it always does when the Hat is thinking.

And you wonder, as you have time and time before, what exactly the Hat is thinking about. Or, perhaps more precisely, why. But you shrug. Your own Sorting had been a matter of seconds: the battered old hat barely touching your brow that it had bellowed "GRYFFINDOR!" to the room aloud and the students had exploded into cheer.

But the Hat here is taking its leisure. It had done so with Molly, you remember with a blush, and with her brother, Fabian. The room seems to hold its breath, and you hold it with them. The teachers, the students, all eyes are on the face of the fair young eleven-year-old.

And finally ...

"RAVENCLAW!"

She bites her lip and hurries down from the stool towards the table that had screamed her name. Satisfied with the Hat's answer, you turn to your plate - you turn to face Molly - before the next student is called up. 

By obligation, you must cheer with your other housemates every time a child totters down, face flushed and looking happy. Molly, across from you, leaps up, her face a wide grin, and claps for the newest member of the Gryffindors. For you are the children of lions, you remark with a sad twist of your lips, and you cannot be afraid.

Dinner passes quickly, and soon thereafter, you lead the children up to the dormitory and stand before the painting that guards the entrance. For all your antics on the train, you had not cared to find out who the other Gryffindor prefect was. Perhaps it does not matter.

"Jujube berries," you tell them, and some of the first years giggle at the odd password. The Fat Lady, as prim as ever, rolls her eyes and swings open. Quickly, you usher the imps into the common room, and stay outside in the hall. 

"They're a right lot this year," you remark, your hands in your pockets as your roll forwards onto the balls of your feet. "Some of them might give poor Binns a heart attack."

She nods and agrees, a soft murmur. You have missed these conversations, you find, late at night with a woman who will eternally be of the same mind, whose wrinkles will not fade, whose smile is ever-fresh and ever present. The Fat Lady is a cruel name to give to her, and you find yourself wishing you knew more about her life.

"Who were you?" you ask, then, undaunted. "When you were alive, I mean?"

Her lips thin and she does not deign to answer. A chill passes between you two, and she mentions that you should go in before you catch your death. Violet is coming, she tells you, and it is to be a private conversation. You roll your head backwards and shrug your shoulders.

"Jujube berries," you say to her coldly, and she notes it. But she swings the door open without a care in the world, and like a ghost, you pass through, till nothing remains except the warmth of the spot where you stood.

 

_III. Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove_

Three minutes until the bell rings. It is a year later, and you are hurrying from History of Magic to Transfiguration. You don't know where she comes from, but her eyes are dark and there are circles beneath her lids. Her hair is wild as it always has been, her skin white and cracked. And you, skidding around a corner in your haste, are prompt to run into her.

"I'm terribly sorry," you say, and she murmurs that it doesn't matter. Your things have gone flying, some of them littered about the floor, but she whispers a soft Summoning spell and they all come together. And for all your rush, you are intrigued by the perfection of her charm. Straightening, she hands you your five-roll essay on Animagi.

"Thank you," you tell her, and she shrugs. 

You hurry your way through the corridors towards your Transfiguration class. Professor McGonagall will not be pleased, and your face is flushed with humiliation. 

"I'm terribly sorry, professor," you gasp. Professor McGonagall looks at you and bits you be seated. Hastily, you slide into the one furthest in the back, just as Molly Prewett bursts into class. She apologizes as well, and you can see the exasperation lying in Professor McGonagall's eyes. She does not expect this. Neither of you, nor of her. She points to the seat next to you, and Molly plops herself down. Her grin is electric as she greets you, and you suddenly feel her warmth shooting into every channel, every vein of your poor and nervous body.

"Hello," you answer back, and she smiles again, setting her parchment upon her desk, and pulling a long and neatly feathered quill from her back. Watching her, you realize you must do the same, and jolt yourself to action. But oh, the distraction she provides ... tendrils rise, and the hair on the nape of your neck stands on end. The scattering of freckles, the bright red hair, so like your own, her young and growing curves. Your eyes darting all over the place, you curl your fist to concentrate, and attempt to listen to what Professor McGonagall is saying.

She is lecturing about the process of becoming an illegal Animagus, the very subject that your essay had touched upon. Her eyes cut a swath across the room as they come to fall on you, and you hear her voice call your name. You stand.

"Yes, professor?"

Professor McGonagall asks you to elaborate on a certain question, and suddenly, though you can hear your voice, though you can feel the strands in your throat playing like a lost instrument, you cannot listen to your words. But you know that what you say is right. It cannot be wrong. Not now. Not in front of her.

Professor McGonagall nods as you speak and paces the front of the room. Her hands are clasped behind his back and she thanks you for your words. You sit down again. There is a torn piece of parchment in front of you, on the desk. 

_Hey,_ it says. _I like you._

You glance at Molly, your eyes wide in shock. She's scribbling on her parchment and affords a quick glance towards Professor McGonagall. The picture of concentration. The parchment note is fire to your fingers. Words appear in curling script before your wide blue eyes.

_Don't look so surprised. It's hardly been a kept secret._

"No," you whisper. Your voice is hoarse and raucous, low and full of tense, fearful phlegm. "No, I suppose not."

You find that a small smile graces Molly's lips and she turns her head to look at you, her brown eyes large and wet, anticipating, shining with possibility. You drop your hand into your robes and make fists in the shabby cloth.

Her eyes ask you if she is to expect an answer.

You nod your head as you feel your Adam's apple bob up and down, curse of your sin. "Yes, yes," you mutter. Her face is a mask of indecision, torn. She does not know whether she is right or wrong to tell you. You open your chapped lips, ready to speak her fate. 

"Reciprocated." Of course, you had returned to a mathematical concept to explain your juvenile infatuation. This is what you do. The world is a sphere of geometry, nothing more. Logic and calculations can explain it all. But before Molly Prewett's glorious smile, you find that it all melts from ice and into wide oceans.

 

_IV. Dance me to the end of love_

It is your fourth patrol of the week. She is kissing a boy in a shadowed corridor. She is thirteen, the boy fifteen, and you are a young man of seventeen, proud and with a larger, brighter badge on your breast. Their bodies are pressed against the cold stone wall, their skin inflamed by their own touch. You drop your eyes, unsure you want to see this passion, and hurry past them in your rounds.

Of course, you had seen many other such couples sprinting off into dark corners for sweet appreciation, but never like this. Never so ... _wanton_. Never so cruel. You do not know who she is, this soft scented girl forced against the wall, lips joined, lips devouring, to the dark older boy.

A flush rises to your cheeks. You are ashamed. You know exactly who the boy is. His name is heavy, tainted with power and poison. A Lestrange. You don't remember which one. You don't want to. He is a Lestrange, and quietly you sail past them, a dark enemy ship on a slumbering horizon.

Later that night you lie on your bed, your eyes facing the ceiling and your arms extended past the edges of the sheets. Your hair is mussed, your eyes unfocussed and glassy. Molly had asked what precisely was wrong. You hadn't answered. You hadn't wanted to. You don't understand this drive, this fascination, that humans hold for flesh. It is carnal, it is consuming. A roar begins in your chest, one you find yourself wracked with, night after night. 

Molly offers you the perfection of simple beauty, but you cannot help to appreciate the darkness. The way eyes are on fire in the dark hidden corridors of the school, the ways secrecy and adulteration course like adrenaline through young veins. You cannot understand it. It is all so _forbidden_ to you. Bitterly, you remember that mere mortals cannot taste ambrosia. 

You know, in the most cob-webbed corners of your young mind, that you would do it. You would have what it takes, you would not be defied. These are times of bone and night. No one you know has escaped the corruption that spreads. No one.

Except Molly. Molly who is bright as a snowflake, white as a rose. Molly whom you had adored when she was unattainable, the princess of Gryffindor. Molly whom you now could not bear to see.

Stars wink at you from their lofty place in the window by the moon. _Look_ , they chant. _Look at how we shine_. And even though you are not a romantic, you smile.

"Yes," you murmur, "beautiful." And it is true, because they are the stars, and none can touch them.

 

_V. Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone_

Five years pass until you see her again. The dark clouds that had gathered for so long on that sleeping horizon are now just breaking across the sky, like knights to battle. You are now twenty-two, and Molly carries your ring. But you cannot see it, though it shines. The brunette, that slippery nymph, is only eighteen, and barely a girl out of the school room, though she promises more.

You see that Lestrange's influence upon her has twisted her for the worse. Her hair is knotted and wild, flyaway strands cover her previously smooth complexion. It is now riddled with scars. She is a girl still, but not an innocent one. When she is buried, no one will think to dress her in white. Lestrange's bruising kisses have swollen her lips to the ripe richness of scarlet blood. But still they are curved, like a hunter's bow, in that strange half-smile that you had learned to perfect, the year you knew her first.

You are in a silent room, awaiting the others. She had arrived alone, without her boyfriend. Molly has told you that he is a strong-boned British boy. The name she had mentioned does not call to mind any one face. But hers does. 

Her hair makes ripples down her narrow back, her body is shrouded in her heavy black robes. At one glance into her ochre eyes, you can see: she has not forsaken her curse.

 _Lestrange_. The word sounds sweet and saccharine and you dare not pronounce it aloud, lest it anger her. A fire crackles behind her, dying in the hearth. You know not where you are, the letter only bore the words Come alone, and without a sound had whipped you away from your silent grave.

"Hello," you say, and the words sound dry and cracked. "I suppose Dumbledore's called you here."

Her eyes whip around to look at you, golden and dark, and burrow their depth into the hard metal sheen that is your face. With a nod, she acquiesces to the statement. Her shoulders are still swathed in her gossamer robes and she, dark as a sorceress, begins to prowl around the room.

You grow impatient, alone with the sinister silence and the witch that will not relent, and wish for the others to come. They are late, as usual, though your Portkey had been well-timed. And then, slowly, one by one, they enter. Drawn faces after drawn faces, all powdered with ash and dust and despair. You could be watching a masquerade, a ballet perfectly choreographed for destruction. This pas de quatre has spun you wide. Because you thought you had known what you were going into.

But you had no idea.

Gently, like a river rocking a boat, the meeting passes. It is dark, dreary, but you manage to find lightness when Molly appears. Like an angel, though the cliché is trite, you can see the halo, that soft yellow light, burning like a flame and its wicker about her body. She is yours, you think, yours alone. Her smile is enough to promise that.

But is it enough? Is it enough in this world of corruption? Your glance falls again on the gaunt, Lestrange-ravaged girl. _No_ , you think. _No, it's never enough_.

That night is the first night you are unfaithful.

 

_VI. Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon_

The first night, she kisses you six times, and no more. And though you long for her touch, you cannot lay claim to it. It is not yours. Neither are the spiderweb scars that lace across her rabid face. Her hands run down your chest, your skin, your neck, your jaw, and you bathe in her attentions. 

When she leaves, you find yourself longing for more. You are become Humbert Humbert, of Nabokov's fame, crippled with desire and crumbling before your nymph. But she is no nymphet like Dolores. She is a framed young woman with ambitions - oh! such ambitions! - that could surpass the man she swears to fight. And you know, each night, that she returns not to her boyfriend but to her other lover, the one born of sin and cruelty.

_Lestrange._

Happily could you wring his neck. Lay your fingers around his white throat and pull till the air around you is poison and he lies like the corpse of a snake between your hands. It is Lestrange who bruises women, who burns their lips with his own devouring kisses, until they lay all but spent with him in that littered leaf-bed of their own corrupted making.

And strangely, you don't feel guilt.

The first night of the six kisses, you do not go home to red-headed Molly, who lies on your bed with the halo around her body. Instead, you slither out of that bed of sin and wander the streets for a little bit, letting the night air clean and wash your soiled mind. The smoky air of London is new to your pristine senses, the calls of unearthly women walking the streets equally so. The moon hangs low and yellow that night, covered with that dirty sinful gauze.

 _Look at what you've become_ , she sighs. _My wayward child_.

"Don't speak to me," you mutter, and the moon regains her silence. The stars, tonight, do not glitter in the apple of your eye as they did before. They are hidden, terrified and frustrated, behind thick cumulus clouds. Clouds that carpet the sky.

Slowly, you begin to kick a pebble in front of you, a few feet, and you catch up. A few feet, and you catch up. It is a childish game, but you find it soothing. And as you kick and catch up, the guilt begins to grow, like weeds in a barren garden. You begin to wonder why it is you gave in to craven desires. A raven caws above the city, its throat filled with grime and dust. And, like the raven, you cough.

You have discarded your prejudices and promises for a life of justice and light. And in Molly, you find that, pure and clean and not as the stagnant waters that have, from twilight until dawn, sluiced around your poor, lustful body. Molly does not offer you what you desire. It would break heaven if she did.

You walk the lonely road, a single man in search of the moon, when all you've done is scorn her.

 

_VII. Show me slowly what I only know the limits of_

Seven flowers are braided into Molly's bright red hair, and her halo blinds you again. She is here, of course, because Molly adores her and wanted to share the joy. You are a married man, now, and still captured, like a young boy not yet a man, in the lure of those ochre eyes. She doesn't stare at you, of course she doesn't. She knows what it means to keep up honorable appearances. But you don't, do you?

You stare at her, hard and fast, throughout the dancing of the evening. This time, she has brought her boyfriend. He is as Molly had described, tall and burly and altogether too wrong for her delicate beauty. Because that is what she is to you. Beautiful. Beautiful and terrible.

Molly asks you why you look so hard at the two of them dancing, and you can hear the nervous laugh in her voice. Quickly, you gather her in your arms and place a cold kiss upon her brow.

"Because I was wondering if he was for the Cannons," you answer lightly. In the midst of this war, you spin a lie. A spider spreading its silken web. "He looks like one of the players."

Molly smiles her brilliant smile, satisfied again, and you wonder with a lurch in your stomach what you had ever found so beautiful in her. She is no longer the bright happy girl on the train, the unattainable Gryffindor princess from Transfiguration. She has morphed, because of the war, into that pale and ghostly beast they call _wife_.

She doesn't, you think, deserve you. You are unreachable for her, a man soaring high above his sleeping sun, and like a bird, you turn and fly away from her. Far, into the arms of the dark-haired sorceress. But Molly doesn't know that. No, she does not. It is a well-kept secret between the two of you.

The affair - and though the word tastes vile upon your tongue you know you cannot deny it - that had taken root, dark in your heart, has consumed you. But she begged you to keep it secret. Not for Molly. Not for her burly, brawny boyfriend. For Lestrange.

She had said Lestrange will kill you if he finds out.

"Let him come," you had said, letting your muscles ripple and roar. "Let him come and claim you."

She'd looked up at you then, that perfect half-smile upon her hunter's lips once more, and her black lashes had been thick with tears. You had left her, then, because once a small tear, once that small, salty ruin has fallen, you always leave. That is why you have stayed with Molly. Because Molly does not cry. She does not sob.

Molly smiles, and then the sun melts away.

 

_IIX. Dance me to the end of love_

You are forty. Molly has told you that she wants eight children, though you are already parents to five. She has said it is a nice round number. Even, she says. Perfect. You do not say that you prefer odd. You prefer seven, that number of supreme corruption, to eight. Eight will not bring eightfold joy. Eight will bring eightfold terror.

Rapidly you leave your home, hurrying towards the secret-guarding building, that perfect hospital. At the exit, you hear two women: one blonde, one brunette, whispering fiercely. It is about flowers. It is about betrayal. It is about her, that sleek, black-haired beauty that you gave up so long ago.

Why? You can't remember. But you have never regretted it.

Rapidly you enter the building The lobbyist knows you by now. She smiles that pretty, dazzling smile, and lets you mount the staircase. The nurse is already waiting for you there, and she - that sorceress, that enchantress - is nestled in the confines of a metal wheelchair.

The nurse greets you and takes your coat. At once she leaves, and you slowly lower yourself onto the stool that has been set for you. You take her hand. You kiss the vein fluttering at her wrist.

"Hullo, my darling," you say, your voice a throaty whisper. Her eyes, confused and enraged, look at you as though she cannot see past your spider's silk. Perhaps she cannot. But you can never tell the lie from the truth anymore.

"Do you remember who you are today?" you ask. A flash of recognition lights in her eye. Yes. She does. She will not say it. You sigh, because she will not say it. She does not know. She does. It's a perfect, perfect, dizzying world. You are soaring too high. You have yet to fall.

Her parched lips open and a sigh escapes. She will not say it. She will. She doesn't know.

Her trembling hand reaches out and grabs your own wrist. Her fist clenched, she opens it to drop a crumpled candy wrapper into your outstretched palm. Your throat freezes, you, the spider, are as cold as winter.

Slowly, you rub your thumb across the wrinkled paper. It smells of strawberry and chemicals. Her eyes look at you again. She turns her head to one side, letting her thin black hair fall across one shoulder.

"I know, I know," she murmurs. She is a ghost. She will not say it. She knows, but she will not say it. Her hunter's lip curve and she smiles again.

"Alice, Alice, Alice."


End file.
